AU Pantry Staples

If it's not on this list, a recipe here will call it out by name. Everything on this list is something worth having in the house before you need it, not something to buy fresh per recipe. Restock this list on the weekly shop; treat the recipe archive's own ingredient lists as the fresh/perishable additions on top of it.

Produce

Bought weekly, not stockpiled — but these are the ones that show up across enough recipes to plan around rather than buy per-recipe.

• Brown onion. The default aromatic base across most of this archive. Buy the 2kg bag, not loose — cheaper per unit and they keep for weeks in a cool, dark spot.
• Garlic. A whole bulb goes further than it looks. Pre-minced jar garlic is an acceptable swap on a bad week, but the flavour is flatter — use slightly more if you go that route.
• Ginger. Keeps for a month in the crisper, or freeze the whole knob and grate it frozen — no peeling required, and it stops it going soft before you use it.
• Carrot, celery. The other two-thirds of a mirepoix base, used across the batch/braise recipes specifically.
• Baby spinach. Wilts into almost anything at the last minute for a vegetable hit that doesn't need its own cooking step. Buy the bag, not the bunch — less waste for how it's actually used here.
• Lemon and lime. For the finishing squeeze at the end of a dish — this is a "brightness" ingredient, not a main one, but it shows up constantly.

Pantry (dry goods, tins, oils, sauces)

• Jasmine rice, 5kg bag. Cheaper per serve than the small bags by a wide margin if you're cooking rice more than twice a week, which most of the meal-prep recipes assume.
• Tinned chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, brown lentils. Home-brand (Woolworths "Woolworths brand", Coles "Coles" range) is genuinely no different from named brands for tinned legumes — don't pay the premium here.
• Tinned diced/crushed tomatoes. Buy in bulk when on special; every braise/curry/bolognese in the archive uses at least one tin.
• Coconut milk. Ayam brand specifically holds together better through a long simmer than the cheapest home-brand tins, which can split. Worth the extra dollar for anything that simmers longer than 20 minutes.
• Soy sauce and gluten-free tamari. Keep both if anyone in the house needs gluten-free — tamari is a straight 1:1 swap in every recipe here.
• Fish sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil. The backbone of the Asian-inspired stir-fry recipes. Small bottles last a long time; don't over-buy.
• Curry powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, smoked paprika, chilli flakes, Chinese five-spice, ground turmeric. The full spice-rack overlap across this archive's recipes — if these eight are stocked, at least one recipe from every cuisine tag here is cookable tonight.
• Honey, maple syrup. Used in small quantities as a counterpoint to soy/chilli-forward sauces, not as a sweetener on their own.

Dairy & Eggs

• Eggs, a full dozen minimum. Egg muffins and breakfast burritos both go through a dozen-plus in one batch session — buy the 12-pack as a baseline, not the 6-pack.
• Greek yoghurt. Used in the overnight oats base and occasionally as a cooling side to anything spiced.
• Shredded tasty cheese. The default melting cheese across the archive. Buy the block and grate it yourself if you're going through it fast — noticeably cheaper per kilo than pre-shredded.
• Cottage cheese, smooth style. Specific to the high-protein egg muffins — the smooth style blends into the egg mix cleaner than the chunky style.
• Haloumi. Firm enough to grate into fritters without turning to mush, unlike softer fresh cheeses.
• Butter. For glazes and finishing, not the main cooking fat in most recipes (that's vegetable or olive oil).

Meat & Seafood / Frozen protein staples

• Chicken thigh fillets. The default protein across the quick-weeknight recipes — more forgiving than breast at high heat, and noticeably cheaper per kilo. Coles "RSPCA Approved" or Woolworths "Australian" ranges are both fine; there's no need to chase a premium tier for weeknight cooking.
• Frozen peeled prawns. Genuinely as good as fresh once cooked, at a fraction of the price and with zero peeling time. Thaw under cold running water, never hot, or they go rubbery.
• Beef mince, 5-star. The cheapest mince grade works fine in anything that simmers 30+ minutes (bolognese, chili) — save the leaner, pricier mince for quick-cook dishes where fat doesn't have time to render out.
• Chuck steak. The correct cut for anything slow-cooked over 4+ hours — cheaper than rump or scotch fillet and it's actually the better cut for the job, not a compromise.
• Salmon portions, skin-on. Tasmanian salmon from either major supermarket is a reliable, consistent product — ask the seafood counter for skin-on specifically, it protects the flesh in the oven and crisps up as a bonus.

Frozen

• Frozen peas, edamame, mixed stir-fry veg. The backup vegetable when the crisper's empty — never a downgrade for anything that gets fully cooked anyway (soups, stews, stir-fries).
• Frozen berries. For the overnight oats swap and not much else in this archive currently — a small, deliberate stock item, not a bulk-buy.

Bakery / Grains

• Large flour tortillas. Specific to the freezer breakfast burritos. Keep a spare pack in the freezer itself — they thaw in under a minute and don't need to be a fresh-only item.
• Soba noodles, pearl barley. Two specific grains this archive relies on for texture (soba for the peanut bowl, barley for the beef stew) that aren't interchangeable with rice or regular wheat noodles without changing the dish.

Recipes that use this

A few staples worth a direct pointer to where they get the most use: canned chickpeas anchor the Chickpea & Spinach Curry and the whole vegetarian filter page; chuck steak is specific to the Slow Cooker Beef & Barley Stew; frozen prawns to the Quick Prawn & Zucchini Noodle Stir-Fry. For the full high-protein set built around eggs, chicken thigh, and tinned legumes, see the high-protein filter page.

Seasonal produce calendar (AU, Sydney-typical)

This is also what the current seasonal batch-cook plan is built around each quarter — the recipes in a given seasonal plan lean on whatever's actually cheap and in season that quarter, not a fixed list.